"The family, flaunting the natural and divine positive law, is more intent on the enjoyment of comforts, pleasures, and luxuries than on the performance of its duties.

Marriage is lowered from the dignity of a sacrament to a merely human institution. Legalized promiscuity and polygamy are everywhere spreading their deadly virus. The primary purpose of wedlock is subordinated to selfish love of ease, to personal preferences, to mere lustful gratification.

Animality has superseded rationality. Children, where they are tolerated, are indoctrinated with materialism and hedonism. Human life has been stripped of its sacred character.

Euthanasia, or mercy-killing, has found supporters in many places. The rights of the unborn child, through a process of rationalization, in certain circumstances are declared forfeited."

Take a look around Italy this year and you will see that everywhere the palm trees are dying.

Sadly, this is from a parasite that arrived recently from Africa: the punteruolo rosso.

This has proven to be a scandal in the media as the government has done nothing to stop it and has taken no step at prevention in the allocation of funds to help save at least the more prominent palms.

Pope John Paul II, in his address to the World Council of Churches in Geneva on June 12, 1984, stated that the Catholic Church "is convinced that in the ministry of the Bishop of Rome It has preserved the visible pole and guarantee of unity in full fidelity to the apostolic tradition and to the faith of the Fathers."

-Primacy of the Bishop of Rome and the Ecumenical Dialogue by Rev. Adriano Garuti, O.F.M.

"Do not some of them say that if it were not for the primacy of the Pope, the reunion of the separated churches with the Catholic Church would be easy? We beg the separated brethren to consider the inconsistency of this position, not only in that, without the Pope the Catholic Church would no longer be Catholic, but also because, without the supreme, efficacious and decisive pastoral office of Peter the unity of the Church of Christ would utterly collapse."